The boxed glove dispenser generally relates to dispensers of personal protective equipment and more specifically to a dispenser for gloves. The dispenser releases gloves singly under gravity feed.
Early on medical providers worked with the clothes on their backs and their bare hands. Such conditions led to germ transmission from doctor to patient, patient to doctor, other patient to doctor to patient, and the like. Morbidity and mortality from infection and transfection was a risk at every turn in a medical setting. Before the turn of the last century, William Halstead pioneered use of surgical gloves as a professor at Johns Hopkins University. From those humble beginnings at one medical school and many epidemiological studies later, gloves have become abundant in hospitals and medical settings of all kinds. Gloves come in many kinds, however examination gloves of various materials see prevalent use. Gloves see additional use in dental practices and is other locations where a service provider contacts a patient. Gloves generally prevent a provider from transmitting his own germs to a patient and the patient from transmitting germs back to the provider.
Medical providers now use gloves ubiquitously. Early training of medical providers, continuing training, and reminders from insurers, prompt and stimulate glove usage. The AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s also reinforced the need to wear gloves. The appearance of MRSA in the 2000s and this decade also prompts usage of gloves. Medical providers generally have gloves in ample stock and readily available, typically in exam rooms and surgical suites among other places. Medical providers typically reach for a pair of gloves from a storage box and place them on their hands before contacting a patient.
Medical providers have such conditioned responses about gloves that they overlook what happens as they retrieve a pair of gloves. Retrieving gloves has its own problematic issues as further described.